Biostar TPower I45 Motherboard Review

As chipsets go, the Intel P45 Express is largely identical to the P35 Express which preceded it, so if you're familiar with that platform the P45 will be a comfortable fit from the first boot up. The main difference is PCI Express 2.0 compliance, and to that end Biostar have equipped the TPower I45 with a pair of PCI Express x16 slots. Electrically that means a single videocard, either ATI or nVidia, will runs with 16 PCIe lanes (x16) of data bandwidth, while two ATI videocards operating in Crossfire will receive 8 PCIe lanes each (x8/x8). The second PCI Express x16 slot is disabled unless it's being used for Crossfire, but both slots are PCI Express 2.0 compliant.